The Shenanigans of Easter Eve
by Anne O'Nimmous
Summary: "Twas the night before Easter..." With some help from Kinners, Anne pulls a Springtime prank. Mass crossover, marked as Avengers and LotR for chapters 2 and 3.
1. Intro

_Author's Note: There were going to be a couple more chapters, including The Dresden Files, Doctor Horrible, and Welcome to Night Vale, but I went to a convention and couldn't finish in time. If any of you would still like to see those, however, let me know and I'll write them. Hope you enjoy!_

* * *

 _'_ _Twas the night before Easter and all through the 'Verse,_

 _Hardly a creature was stirring but Anne, a scheme in her purse._

It was late night when I snuck out to meet Kinners. She was oh-so-casually leaned against a tree just down the street, awaiting my arrival. "Did you get it?" I asked, wincing inwardly at the cliché opening of all clandestine dealings.

Kinners beamed. "It's on the next corner. All I had to do was say I needed it for a special mission." She paused, hesitant. "This _is_ a special mission, right?"

"Of course." I grinned evilly. "You're going to love it. I already have the necessary supplies, so let's get started."

We set off down the street. Roughly five minutes later we emerged from the Tardis, which was parked right where Kinners said. She was trying so hard to stifle maniacal laughter that she might be in very real danger of spontaneously combusting. Truth be told, so was I. Every now and then a strangled titter would escape, threatening to set us both off and wake the neighbors. Choking on our own laughter, we each bid the other good night and went home with a camera, whose memories held the key to our merriment.

I could just picture their faces.


	2. Avengers

It was a beautiful Easter morning at Avengers HQ, and they all stumbled out in varying degrees of 'awake' to meet up for breakfast. Cap was the first to arrive, what with his boy-scout-like 'early to bed, early to rise' attitude. Natasha was next. She had a peculiar sort of expression when she saw Steve, but quickly smoothed it over. How he chose to celebrate Easter was his business. She just never would have figured him for—Tony walked in, coffee in hand, and pulled up short.

He stared at them for a couple of seconds. "Did I miss a memo, or are you two just being cute?" Steve, who'd been preoccupied with a newspaper, looked up in mild surprise.

"Good morning, Tony. What do you mean? Nice ears, by the way."

"What?"

Natasha, with dawning comprehension, raised a hand to her head just as Barton arrived. He looked around at the scene, just as confused as the others, who were all staring at him. Natasha's fingers touched something fuzzy. She pulled. In her hand was a pink, bunny-eared headband. Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "Whose idea was this?" she demanded.

The men were nonplussed. She looked from one to the other, trying to decide who would pull such a prank, and realized that they were all victims as well. Judging from their expressions, none of them knew. Or one of them was hiding his own involvement. Steve was too innocent—it wouldn't have been him. And Tony would, but could never keep a straight face—not him. But Barton—she glared, about to make an accusation, when Thor came in. The sight of him in fuzzy pink bunny ears and painted-on whiskers was too much. After a few seconds of shocked silence, everyone burst into laughter. Well, everyone but Thor.

The hilarity only increased upon Banner's arrival as he blinked owlishly behind his glasses and tried to figure out what was so funny. To him, it looked like everyone had gone insane. Or gotten extremely drunk. He checked his watch. It was only 8:00 in the morning. And didn't Thor have some sort of divine alcohol tolerance or something?

That's when Fury stormed in, bunny ears in hand. "All right, which one of you... Just what is going on here?"

Banner shrugged, unaware that he was included in the source of Fury's confusion. "I have no idea."

And no one ever did figure it out.


	3. Lord of the Rings

It was a fine Sunday morning, just like all others in the Shire. Frodo was the first of the friends to wake—he, Sam, Merry, and Pippin had all stayed in Bilbo's home the previous night, in order to begin celebrating all the earlier the next day. He stretched, yawned, and went out to start making eggs and bacon for breakfast. The smell of good food soon roused the other hobbits, who piled into the kitchen giving each other odd looks. None of them wanted to say anything quite yet, lest they seem ignorant of some plan which had obviously been put together.

It wasn't until Bilbo entered that things gained some measure of clarity. He looked around in shock for a moment, then exclaimed, "Not again!"

The younger hobbits all wondered at his outburst. _They_ had never heard of something like this before, and certainly had never done it themselves. "What do you mean, Uncle?" Frodo asked, not without some alarm.

Bilbo pulled a pair of bunny ears off his head and pointed to each of his guests in turn. "I'd wager my best walking stick that none of you know that you're wearing these ridiculous things as well."

There was a flurry of activity as each hobbit checked his own curly-haired head for a pair of ears. Indeed, each of them had one and none of them had been aware of it. "But who—" Pippin started.

"I'm sure I don't know," Bilbo grumped. "It's happened to me once before. I was in the company of some dwarves at the time—fine fellows—and one spring morning, we all woke with these on." He held up the bunny ears, pink and fuzzy. "No one admitted to having done it, and I can now see it was indeed none of them. I must apologize to Bofur for doubting his word all these years."

There was a knock at the door. When Frodo hastened to open it, he found a disgruntled Gandalf waiting. The wizard thrust a bunny-eared headband under the hobbit's nose. "Just what is the meaning of this, Master Baggins?"

Frodo retreated hastily. "There's no point in looking for answers here, Gandalf. We don't have any."

And they never did.


	4. Firefly

The Black was always silent, though I don't know if you could rightly call it _peaceful._ _Serenity_ surely wasn't, at that point anyway. The old Firefly's crew was in an uproar as they reacted in various ways to waking up with bunny-ear headbands and drawn-on whiskers. Wash remembered hearing something about an Easter tradition from Earth-That-Was, something to do with long-eared rodents that laid eggs, that was somehow supposed to remind people of Christ's tomb being empty.

Of course accusations were quickly leveled against him, until he pointed out that he'd been with Zoë all night. She could attest to that, too, as they hadn't actually fallen asleep for quite some time. Then Jayne (who, predictably, was the one doing most of the blaming and indignant bellyaching) pointed an accusatory finger at River, who was sitting off to the side giggling as everyone argued.

She stuck her tongue out at him. "A day is a solar-based mode of timekeeping, therefore not applicable in space," she said matter-of-factly. "Not me. It was the time-box that did it, and the girls inside."

Of course no one could figure out what in the 'Verse she meant, or if she meant anything at all, and things eventually settled down as the crew went their separate ways. Most of them cleaned themselves up after the prank, but Kaylee kept her bunny ears and whiskers—she thought it was cute. River didn't care one way or the other, and she didn't see what it had to do with the good Shepherd's book of faith anyway.

Mal, however, was sufficiently ruffled by the affront to his dignity that he flushed all evidence out the airlock and left even the subject behind, floating in the Black with a handful of pink fluff.


	5. Sherlock

John Watson had been woken more gently on the battlefield than he was that morning. **_"JOHN!"_** Sherlock's furious bellow was accompanied by a particularly stiff throw pillow, which had been hurled with incredible force but (fortunately for John) less than perfect aim.

John bolted upright, fumbling in the nightstand for his gun. Had someone broken in? Were they under attack? What—his train of thought was abruptly de-railed as he received another pillow right in his face. Sherlock was towering over him, fairly trembling with rage. "Sherlock, what are you doing?" He paused, brow furrowing in confusion. "Are those..."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes, assessing, another pillow in hand. Finally he backed off. "Yes, and you've got them too. From your reaction you obviously had no idea, but if it wasn't you, who was it? _Who_ , John? Surely not Mrs. Hudson, though she has been suspiciously quiet lately, you can almost hear her scheming, but it wasn't about this, no, it has to do with some man or other, she's been plotting to have their paths cross, 'accidentally' of course, at the market tomorrow morning in fact. I wouldn't put it past Andersen, but he's too thick to come up with an idea like this, let alone carry it out. Donovan might be able, but she wouldn't—she'd consider it beneath her, whatever that means. It wouldn't occur to Lestrade either, though I've no doubt he would find it exceptionally amusing, and besides, he's on holiday. Even Mycroft wouldn't stoop to this level of brotherly 'concern', though he might have hired someone with a sick sense of humor to convey his best wishes for the holiday. Yes, that must be it, and he's going to regret it. I'll see to it he has a crisis on his hands by noon."

Sherlock's rapid-fire deductions, muttered almost without pausing for breath, flew over John's head. After the realization that he was not, in fact, in any real danger, he had put away his gun and let Sherlock's tirade slip in one ear and out the other. He was too groggy to keep up anyway, so why make the effort? Something did make its way to his understanding, though. He reached up and pulled a bunny-ear headband off his pillow—it had been knocked off his head when Sherlock was throwing a fit.

As John stared at it in befuddlement, Sherlock dialed his brother's number with such force it's a wonder that his phone didn't sustain damage. Mycroft answered with unusual alacrity. "Happy Easter, brother dear," Sherlock growled. "I suspect you wanted to wish me the same, which is why you had someone pull this disgusting prank."

Mycroft was momentarily lost for words as he deduced the answers to all the obvious questions that others might have asked at that point. "It wasn't me, Sherlock. You should know that I would never do such a thing.

"Then how do you kn—ah, it happened to you as well, didn't it? Do you know who it was?" The idea of his extraordinarily dignified brother being a victim of the same prank went a long way toward mollifying Sherlock.

"If I did, I'd hardly be talking to you," Mycroft scoffed. "I'd be recruiting them. Or destroying them. Someone with intelligence, resources, and skills enough to do something like this would be either a valuable asset or a dangerous enemy."

Little did he know that he'd been pranked not by some highly-skilled assassin, but by a pair of giggly teenage girls with access to a time machine. Dangerous combination, that. And he would never find out, either.

Across the country, Lestrade was enjoying his holiday when he got a text that made it even better. All it contained was the message 'Happy Easter!' and pictures of John and Sherlock, asleep, with bunny ears and whiskers. Sherlock was, of course, furious when he found out, but there was nothing he could do about it.


	6. Supernatural

Easter! For Dean Winchester, that meant only two things: invasively curious kids and sale-priced candy. Kind of like Halloween that way, only less creepy. So it was with a light heart that he woke that morning. In fact, he was smiling blissfully right up until the moment that he lifted his toothbrush and happened to glance in the mirror.

His smile immediately faded into a shocked expression, then turned to a scowl. Heading back into the motel room, he called out, "Real funny, Sam. You sure you want to start this up again? We both know how it's gonna end."

Sam opened his eyes blearily and, yawning, addressed his brother. "Morning, Dean. Start wh—huh." He chuckled. "I never knew you liked Easter so much. Where'd the sudden enthusiasm come from?"

Dean glared. "Cut it out, Sam. I didn't put these on. There's only one other person who could have done it, and he's wearing 'em too."

Even more confused now, Sam put a hand to his head. He pulled down a fuzzy headband complete with pink bunny ears. He gave Dean a look. "Really? Did you take a picture too?"

"Hey, don't look at me. You think if I put them on you, _I'd_ be wearing them?"

A fluttering sound accompanied Cas's sudden appearance, interrupting the budding argument. "Dean, Sam, I have important news. I think there's..." he ground to a confused halt, staring at Dean's headband. "I'm sorry...is there some reason you're wearing false rabbit ears?"

Dean, who'd forgotten to take them off, suddenly remembered the ears on his head. His initial impulse was to remove them, but he suppressed it in an attempt to save face. "Yeah. It's Easter."

Sam stifled a laugh.

Dean shot him a look. "Anyway, what's up? Did you find something?"

Cas finally managed to reclaim his distracted attention, but they were interrupted once more by Crowley's arrival. "Hello, boys." He caught sight of Dean and his lips twitched in an amused smirk. "Well, well, if it isn't the Easter Squirrel. Don't you have eggs to be laying?"

"It's Easter," Dean repeated, a trifle defensively this time. The excuse sounded even flimsier when it was being offered to a cunning adversary rather than a clueless and easily-duped ally.

Crowley would have sniggered had it not been undignified for the King of Hell. Sam rolled his eyes. "What do you want?"

Crowley seemed shocked by the obvious suspicion of the presence of ulterior motives. "Can't I just drop in to say Happy Easter?"

"No," Dean replied flatly.

Crowley sighed. "Well, it seems you've finally grown a few brain cells. Fine. There's a particular thorn in my side that you two might enjoy butchering. One of my not-so-loyal subjects defected and is stealing human souls as fast as he can. Conveniently enough, he's in town. You might not want to wear those, though, darling. I don't think he'd take you seriously." With that, he vanished.

Dean yanked off his bunny ears, growling, "I ever find out who did this, there won't be enough left to salt and burn."

I guess it's a good thing he never found out, then.

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 _Kudos to anyone who gets the Easter Squirrel reference. This chapter's for you. :)_


End file.
